Much work is performed within the field of ambient lighting systems as well as smart light management systems. The lighting solutions allow the user to flexibly determine the atmosphere created by a number of luminaries.
In general, a room is illuminated by a number of distributed luminaries, and it would be desired that an intelligent light management system would be able to measure and control the lighting characteristics of each individual luminary, as well as the scene setting characteristics of the ensemble of luminaries, or the lighting characteristics of multiple luminaries illuminating a certain area at the same time.
For this, two conditions must be met. One is the availability of light sources with tunability of color, intensity and/or emission angle. The maturing of LED-technology in combination with halogen lamps, fluorescent tubes, etc has resulted in light sources that fulfill this demand. The other prerequisite is a control feedback system that measures light properties, such as the intensity, color point and color rendering index, of the individual light sources simultaneously. In order to achieve this, optical sensors are required, for instance to measure the flux, the color point or even the full spectral distribution of the light illuminating a certain part of a room. In addition, and in order to provide a good control of the light properties, one should be able to measure what luminary illuminates which part of the room.
For that purpose, it would be desired to provide a means for controllably redirect light from a light source towards a light sensor.
An electro-optical deflector is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,930,853 to Grego, which is capable of deflecting a collimated light beam.
However, there is still a need in the art for a light measuring device that can measure the above mentioned light properties, and determine which luminary provides what contribution to the illumination of a certain part of the room.